Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,70

Skipper,” said Kirchoff. “Triple-A priority from headquarters.”

“Let me have it,” Norton answered sleepily.

“I can’t. It’s in code—Commander’s Eyes Only.”

Norton was instantly awake. He had received such a message only three times in his whole career, and on each occasion it had meant trouble.

“Damn!” he said. “What do we do now?”

The Exec did not bother to answer. Each understood the problem perfectly; it was one that ship’s orders had never anticipated. Normally, a commander was never more than a few minutes away from his office and the code book in his personal safe. If he started now, Norton might get back to the ship—exhausted—in four or five hours. That was not the way to handle a Triple-A priority.

“Jerry,” he said at length, “who’s on the switchboard?”

“No one. I’m making the call myself.”

“Recorder off?”

“By an odd breach of regulations, yes.”

Norton smiled. Jerry was the best exec he had ever worked with; he thought of everything.

“OK. You know where my key is. Call me back.”

He waited as patiently as he could for the next ten minutes, trying, without much success, to think of other problems. He hated wasting mental effort; it was unlikely that he could guess the message that was coming, and he would know its contents soon enough. Then he could start worrying effectively.

When Kirchoff called back, he was obviously speaking under considerable strain.

“It’s not really urgent, Skipper. An hour won’t make any difference. But I prefer to avoid radio. I’ll send it down by messenger.”

“But why… oh, very well. I trust your judgment. Who will carry it through the air locks?”

“I’m going myself. I’ll call you when I reach the hub.”

“Which leaves Laura in charge.”

“For one hour, at the most. I’ll get right back to the ship.”

A medical officer did not have the specialized training to be acting captain, any more than a captain could be expected to perform an operation. In emergencies, the two jobs had sometimes been successfully switched; but it was not recommended. Well, one order had already been broken tonight.

“For the record, you never leave the ship. Have you waked Laura?”

“Yes. She’s delighted to have the opportunity.”

“Lucky that doctors are used to keeping secrets. Oh, have you sent the acknowledgment?”

“Of course, in your name.”

“Then I’ll be waiting.”

Now it was quite impossible to avoid anxious anticipation. “Not really urgent—but I prefer to avoid radio….”

One thing was certain: the Commander was not going to get much more sleep this night.

CHAPTER 36

BIOT WATCHER

Sergeant Pieter Rousseau knew why he had volunteered for this job; in many ways, it was a realization of a childhood dream. He had become fascinated by telescopes when he was only six or seven years old, and much of his youth had been spent collecting lenses of all shapes and sizes. These he had mounted in cardboard tubes, making instruments of ever-increasing power, until he was familiar with the Moon and planets, the nearer space stations, and the entire landscape within thirty kilometers of his home.

He had been lucky in his place of birth, among the mountains of Colorado. In almost every direction, the view was spectacular and inexhaustible. He had spent hours exploring, in perfect safety, the peaks that every year took their toll of careless climbers. Though he had seen much, he had imagined even more; he had liked to pretend that over each crest of rock, beyond the reach of his telescope, were magic kingdoms full of wonderful creatures. And so for years he had avoided visiting the places his lenses brought to him, because he knew that the reality could not live up to the dream.

Now, on the central axis of Rama, he could survey marvels beyond the wildest fantasies of his youth. A whole world lay spread out before him—a small one, it was true, yet a man could spend a lifetime exploring four thousand square kilometers, even when it was dead and changeless.

But now life, with all its infinite possibilities, had come to Rama. If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.

No one knew who invented the word “biot”; it seemed to come into instant use, by a kind of spontaneous generation. From his vantage point on the hub, Rousseau was Biot Watcher in Chief, and he was beginning, so he believed, to understand some of their behavior patterns.

The spiders were mobile sensors, using vision, and probably touch, to examine the whole interior of Rama. At one time there had been hundreds of them rushing around at high speed, but after less than two